Ezra Pound is dead

Duncan McGibbon, poet and convenor, presents Ezra Pound, the imagist, translator and borrower.

He wanted to “make it new”, despite the difficulty of defining that movement. One aspect is the view that the poet is dead. Only his work is important.

Yet this poet betrayed his country to support Mussolini against the Allies in World War 2. Treachery has emerged as a new threat in our times. Does Pound’s treachery not make any difference to his authority as a writer?

Duncan McGibbon attended St Mary’s University, Strawberry Hill and King’s College London. He was a member of the Poet’s Workshop which ran through the Sixties to the Nineties and began publishing in journals in the 70’s. He lived and worked in Geneva and Berne, commuting between his British and Swiss workshops, until moving to Bath. He toured Australia, read at the Melbourne Festival and was a prize-winner at the Wells Literary Festival. He published his first collection, Consolations, in December 2010. His poems have appeared in the Summer edition of the Salzburg Review and a short story in the collection, Jigsaw (Berne.) He is Poetry co-convenor at BRLSI.